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Did Snakes Help Build the Primate Brain?
sciencehabit writes "A new study of the monkey brain suggests that primates are uniquely adapted to recognize the features of snakes and react in a flash. What's more, by selecting for traits that helped animals avoid them, the reptiles ultimately endowed us with forward-facing eyes, for example, and enlarged visual centers deep in our brains that are specialized for picking out specific features in the world around us, such as the general shape of a snake's body camouflaged among leaves.The results lend support to a controversial hypothesis: that primates as we know them would never have evolved without snakes."
They are at least as important as snaaaaakes.
Surely, a basic consequence of the mechanisms involved in evolution is that all long term changes in individual species are effectively driven by factors of the environment they live in, whether that's predators or other dangers, or the needs of being able to acquire food or raise offspring, etc. Snakes are, we know, dangerous. So surely it's obvious rather than controversial that they should have had some effect on our evolution?
The bible was right after all... it was the snakes fault after all
(Yes, I was aiming for '+5 funny'... how did you know?)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Seems also birds are afraid of snakes. I place rubber snakes on places like boat decks and balconies, they are very effective and birds stay away.
Doubtful...I for one felt dumber after seeing that film.
Blank until
With a good reason for snakes not appearing 110 My ago, the evolution path might so different that there could be no primates at all. It's not that the question is completely pointless, but there are better ways to formulate the problem that make sense.
Cats are not thrilled with things like vacuum cleaner hoses and air hissing sounds.
I thought they were prevalent on hunting animals because stereoscopic vision was important to depth perception which is critical when attacking another animal. Are snakes the reason for raptors having forward facing eyes too?
Something else that looks like a snake? Vines used by primates to move through jungles.
1. ALL land predators have binocular vision - we have binocular vision, thus derived from a predator.
2. forward looking vision does not prevent snake attack from the rear.
3. even mice have better "snake" identification than primates.
Oh course they did.
The one that told Adam to eat the apple.
yep, but unlike "angels" or "face of Jesus" [sic] that you quote, get it wrong with a snake, and you're naturally selected.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Everyone who watched that movie was naturally selected. I feel smarter.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Compared with three other categories of stimuli (monkey faces, monkey hands, and geometrical shapes), snakes elicited the strongest, fastest responses,
They compared one high value stimulus with a number of low value stimuli. How about adding a few other possibilities to the mix; predators like lions or wolves, prey animals, spiders, birds, etc. We have no idea if these other stimuli would get a greater response and, by their theory, influence primate evolution more. The study is obviously flawed.
They find snakes very tasty
Surrounding environment affects evolution of living creatures!
No, forward facing eyes are not to recognise snakes. Prey species, especially the ones that are "snake bite size" tend to have eyes on the sides of their heads, so they have a bigger peripheral to detect predators. Forward facing eyes are only seen in predators and omnivores that rely on eyesight to capture their prey.
Snakes are just one form of predator or danger to humans or mammals in general. Humans, as most mammals, are very inaccurate at detecting snakes, unless they move. They are not more accurate at detecting snakes than they are at detecting any other animal, providing the level of camouflage of that animal is similar to that of the snakes. Singling out snakes to come up with a bunch of generic treats that we and other mammals have as the cause of these is bullcrap and there is no way to prove any of it. Maybe this is the sort of research a recently converted creationist or someone with a snake phobia would come up with. Snakes are nothing more than lizards that evolved to have no legs and the development of mammals saw many more forms and shapes of predators and dangers throughout their evolution that required exactly the same sort of adaptation. I challenge the writers of this paper to do a double blind test and evolve mammals again, both with and without snakes in their world and see what differences occur. Only then I will accept their proof, until then, go back to school and read up before you publish.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
There is a niche for a small, fast, deadly predator. Snakes happen to have won the fight for that niche, and so it's them that we have evolved to spot. If it weren't for the snakes, we woud still exist because something else would exist that we had a need to spot and react really quickly to. Screw you, snakes, you're not all that.
all the animals and vegetation and geography in the environment have an effect on the evolution of all things therein, it has synergy
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
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Here's a tip: If you ever get the chance to travel with a Mexican rodeo... pass.
Searching for ETs in this political environment is a tough sell.
If you can't tend to your own planet, you don't deserve to live here.
You can do better.
If this is true, it it might explain the evolution of lawyers. Under this hypothesis, lawyers would have evolved from snakes that preyed on monkeys. As the monkeys got smarter, the snakes evolved into monkey mimics that still had primates as their primary food source. Finally, it all makes sense.
Why is Snark Required?
Looks like the old question finally gets an answer. :)
... why is that? Something to hide?
More fraudulent, pointless 'research' by psychopaths who enjoy torturing animals.
Did nobody read the Slashdot article yesterday about most 'research' being a fraud?
While detecting specifically "angels" or the "face of Jesus" is not very relevant, detecting human-shaped objects and faces is very relevant. After all, the human-shaped object may be an enemy out to kill you, so you certainly don't want to miss it, and the face can give important information about that person, helping you to determine if that specific person is a threat to you or not.
you've had it with these motherfucking snakes on your motherfucking brain!
The random-face-generator in the brain is uncanny in its ability to amuse simple folk like myself. Also pretty tough on youngsters afraid of the dark.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Dateless and desperate?
I agree, in a way I would have been more impressed if they had shown that these particular neurons are differentially stimulated by pictures of snakes and other snake-like objects. Darwin's ideas about many traits being sex-related may be relevant here - how about seeing whether these neurons can differentiate between pictures of snakes and cocks?
Korma: Good
But did snakes specifically evolve to lie in wait for primates and their delicious x-factor blood? Snakes as we know them would not have evolved without delicious primate blood. Which also explains vampires.
The contribution of snakes in primate evolution led to movies about commercial aviation.
Just the washing instructions on life's rich tapestry
I have had it with these motherf**king snakes on this motherf**king brain!
I have had it with these m*******king snakes on this m*******king brain!
After snakes helped evolve the primate brain, they went to help the human brain.
This is what happened.
This is the problem with modern "science." Any consistency and color of shit can be shoveled as long as someone pulls something vaguely rational-sounding out of their ass and calls it science.
Forward-facing eyes evolved for predators, not prey. They allow for judging of distance and depth, something a predator needs in order to chase. See lions, raptors, wolves, bears, etc.
Side-facing eyes evolved for prey, so they can perceive a wide viewing angle for movement and differences in texture/shade. See antelope, horses, deer, rabbits.
Primates evolved to take advantage of their hands. Enlarged visual centers for climbing and enlarged heads for the brains required to start using tools.
Fuck, and I'm not even a scientist. This "let's see how much utter horseshit we can label science" routine is getting really tired.
This topic pops up as news every 2 or 3 years. I can't count how many times this has been discovered from National Geographic articles alone.
There is a niche for a small, fast, deadly predator. Snakes happen to have won the fight for that niche
Honey Badger don't care: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg
I have had it with these motherfucking snakes in my motherfucking brain!
Supporting evidence is that early primates rarely if ever flew.
No brain, no pain.
Ditto for leopards. And water : the webbing between the fingers that other apes don't seem to have, hairlessness, permanent linear posture. All that's left is for science to explain the ET-like shadow, sense imprinted in the brain, as evidenced by transcranial stimulation.
So, snakes are responsible for our ability to recognize the difference between good (no snake) and evil (SNAKE!!!). Where have I heard that one before?
The theory seems tautologous?
If she's arguing that of early mammals, for the non-burrowing ones snakes were the worst predator - we aren't their only descenants.
By that logic, then ALL descendants of non-burrowing mammals should have binocular vision and forward-facing eyes which is patently not true.
If she's saying that PRIMATES specifically developed forward-facing eyes to deal with snakes, that seems less supportable when forward-facing vision is more generally found across nature in predators of all sorts. That seems a less contrived explanation.
I don't doubt we have particularly good pattern-recognition circuits for snakes; they are a nasty predator for arboreal creatures. But to suggest they're the cause is nonsense.
-Styopa
How could snakes help build a brain when they have no hands?
Evolution is the Devils play thing, now you know why we have thumbs!!
Nada: You see, I take these glasses off, she looks like a regular person, doesn't she? Put 'em back on...
[puts them back on]
Nada: ...formaldehyde-face!
##
Bearded Man: We could be pets, we could be food, but all we really are is livestock.
> [snakes] ultimately endowed us with forward-facing eyes
No they didn't. Swinging through trees did. There are two main reasons animals develop forward-facing AKA binocular vision: swinging through trees and being a hunting animal (lions, tigers, and bears).
Otherwise independent eyes on the sides of your head are preferred so you can spot the lions, tigers, and bears.
I wonder if bears initially got it because they are related to raccoons, tree climbers.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This only proves that we primates have been governed by an elite class of reptilian leaders for far longer than we care to admit!
Very clearly etched in my memory. I was walking down the street in Bangalore, unpaved gravel street. Light breeze on. The wind rustled a long piece of dried coconut palm leaf frond. It slithered in the wind just as a snake would. I had encountered snakes in the wild may be a dozen times in my life previously, but none that long, nor slithering like that palm leaf. It was in the peripheral vision, suddenly almost everything else in my field of vision vanished, except for that snake/palm frond. Eyes pivoted to it, I was startled and instinctively jumped, startling a few near by who too reacted as though they had seen a snake! My body language was so clear they thought they saw a snake too. It was sheepish grin, we all laughed and moved on. I had always known our brains process slithering long things in the peripheral vision differently.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As a heterosexual male who doesn't like the outdoors, my brain would treat them the same.
Does anyone else remember being a child and playing "snakes in the grass"? That game always dug up what I would describe as a very primal fear that lives deep down in all of us.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Soon they will be programmed to love kittys!
We couldn't have evolved without snakes and billions of other details of our history being exactly what it was. It's exactly like the arguments that creationists use when they say that so many specific things had to be just so therefore it cannot be chance. Except... it fails to recognize that if something specific didn't happen in the past then something else would have been happening instead. Without snakes or with any other significant changes to our past some other species would have evolved. Perhaps they would then be looking into their own past.. wow... if X was different we wouldn't be here...
What the article really tells us is that snakes were an important part of our ancestor's lives as our species evolved. Once you know that it goes without saying that we would be a different species without them.
Wow...
Tis adds a whole new level of crediabilty to the book of Genisis...
Going to use the toilet must be a terrifying experience for you...
Perhaps our communication skills can be attributed to snakes as well. Perhaps, "If you see snake, grunt something." was a common tribal initiative back in the day. On a more serious note, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for snakes to be heavily involved in our evolution. For the most part, we don't eat snakes, and snakes don't eat us. At best, snakes could be considered a sort of competitor for small game. It seems difficult to believe that at any point time, snakes actually had a significant effect on whether or not humans would reach sexual maturity, unless of course the prehistoric jungle was like that tomb full of snakes from raiders of the lost ark.
A while back I lived at a place with A/C units installed through the walls. It was nice except birds used to like to try and nest on the tops of the units, which made a terrible mess. I was going to get those spikes that are used to deter them when someone advised me different: Get some rubber snakes from the toy store and put those on top of the A/C units.
Worked like a charm. Lived there another couple of years, didn't have trouble with birds on those A/Cs anymore.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking brain.
Last part of last sentence of abstract, by the way
And to which I say, big deal. Jaguars, spiders, raptors, poisonous mushrooms, etc, etc, etc. All of the above have. It's called their environment and snakes are no more important to a squirrel monkey than a Harpie eagle.
Look at the pic from figure 1. Is that compression artifacts or what? It definitely does not look like a snake.
Here you go:
http://s12.postimg.org/y7oeqyu61/snake.png
Were they on a plane?
Indiana Jones is now traveling by land and sea only. No more planes for him.
there is so much truth in mythology
As a youth I slept hard, as hard as most youths do. Yet, on one occasion, I was awaken in the middle of the night. Sleeping in a clean, tidy, open concrete walled basement, one with painted walls and epoxy floors (like a sterile lab), I was quite agitated and simply could not sleep. After an hour or so, I arose and turned on my light. Nothing. But I was till agitated and tried to sleep. I arose again, but this time I looked under the bed for good measure. To my shock there was a snake, a garter snake. But it was only 6 inches long, a baby. Before and after not only did I never see a snake in the house, but the yard either, and seldom if ever am agitated during sleep. I attribute this event to some ancient watchdog function during sleep, one that may have evolved during evolutionary processes. Again, maybe coincidence.
Seriously? Nobody is playing the trouser snake card?
Apple. Garden.
'Nuff Said.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Perhaps a more important differentiation to an arboreal animal would be snakes and branches. One represents safety, the other danger (and possibly lunch).
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Isn't this just the basis of evolution? Did we not all learn this in high school? Snakes may kill you. Any genetic advantage to avoid things that may kill you tend to propagate through the species over time.
I thought everyone knew this.
If we colonize Mars, it won't be the World Wide Web anymore. UWW?
. If it weren't for the snakes, we woud still exist because something else would exist that we had a need to spot and react really quickly to.
Assuming that's so...
That niche might have been taken by some sort large trapdoor spider like predator, that would erupt from hiding behind us.
So instead of evolving better binocular vision to spot them, we'd have super acute hearing to catch the rustle that gave us an extra split second warning.
we would still exist
But we wouldn't be able to drive or shoot worth shit. For some people that's not really much of a change I guess.:)
"Three Apples for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne,
In the Land of Jesus where the Clergy lie.
One Apple to rule them all, One Apple to find them,
One Apple to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Jesus where the Clergy lie".
Mysteries 20:13-14
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Hypothesis not really very controversial. Naturally the way it's stated, which subtly implies "the direction evolution of primates owes entirely or largely to snakes over and above other factors", is disingenuous, but you have to expect that from slashdot summaries. The evolution of primates owes to the sum of all factors they and their predecessors encountered throughout evolutionary history. It's just like you can't reverse the butterfly effect and identify the particular butterfly that flapped its wings and caused Hurricane Katrina, it's pretty flimsy to try to work forward-looking eyes back to snakes specifically.
There is a simple explination of why humans can see snakes and other preditor shapes. Those humans, and their ancestors that did not have this ability became food.
From Big Bird: "One of these things is not like the others, One of these things just doesn't belong, Can you tell which thing is not like the others, By the time I finish my song?"
From the Abstract: "Pulvinar neurons responded faster and stronger to snake stimuli than to monkey faces, monkey hands, and geometric shapes, and were sensitive to unmodified and low-pass filtered images but not to high-pass filtered images."
They just choose one unfamiliar species, and based on reaction, attribute evolution to the out of four things. Had they put a monkey's tail, rather than hands, in the shape sample, it might have meant something more. Or an octopus. Or a banana. Or a cigar...
Gently reply
This article http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/opinion/03isbell.html?pagewanted=print seems to have a bit more justification and answers some of the questions from the comments above. In short, primates that evolved in regions with venomous snakes have distinctly better vision than those that evolved elsewhere.
I realize that Slashdot is targeted more to computer and hard science nerds than social science and humanities nerds, but I'm surprised there haven't been comments about the mythology of humans and snakes.
In human folklore, snakes appear as associated with miracles of healing, purveyors of magical knowledge, embodiments of evil (particularly from the desert monotheisms and their modern cultural offshoots), and more. Though human stories often project anthropomorphic traits on many different animals, snakes are nearly always associated with some aspect of a supernatural or archetypal force. For example, the Greek trickster demigod-and-later-god Hermes was associated with snakes in several ways.
Respectively, some examples from the list of associations above are the early Christian church's story of Paul in Acts 28, or that the snake was the sacred animal of Asklepios; the snake is the ouroborous, the symbol of infinity and rebirth (like in the shedding of its skin), and Tiamat, the water dragon goddess of Babylonian/Akkadian mythology was the primordial chaos that birthed the world; and the obvious example of evil snakes is the embodiment of the Adversary in the Jewish creation mythology, but David Icke's modern mythology of evil reptilian shapeshifter overlords no doubt draws from his own Christian faith. Snakes also play important roles in the imagery of Neoplatonic theurgy, alchemy, and Hindu mythology. Wikipedia has several interesting articles or lists of articles on the subject: see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_worship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_(symbolism)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_serpent_deity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Serpent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caduceus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini_energy
--"snake nerd"
P.S. I am not attesting to the accuracy, or even scientific relevance except from a anthropology/folklore perspective, of any of this. Storytelling is what it is.
It's not just snakes, I think the human brain is pretty hard-wired for most forms of predator.
I was at an outdoor/fishing show once, and as I came around a corner and looked up, about 50 feet in front of me was a tiger which had been stuffed and mounted. Not having seen many tigers before, I wasn't prepared for the sheer size of the damned thing.
My brain registered an immediate "holy shit, run" -- because I suspect some primitive part of our brain is wired to say to us "you do not want to mess with that".
This all happened before there was time for conscious thought. So I'm pretty sure it isn't just snakes -- my guess is deep in the primitive parts of your brain is a catalog of things to avoid.
And, my brain was telling me that something 11 feet long and several hundred pounds of big furry predator was not something to tangle with.
I'm not surprised by this even in the slightest -- because I've personally experienced an immediate flight response, and it wasn't even a live tiger. Once I got closer to it, I confirmed to myself that if I was out in the open and saw one of those things, it would be time for a clean pair of shorts. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
AC is so right - I was in a church the other day and looked up at a glass window panel and I was like "OMG it's full of angels and faces of Jesus!"
while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();
Creationists will probably say it's because of the snake in the Garden of Eden - Adam and Eve started out as wall-eyed!
It seems to me like this study has concentrated on the reaction of primates to snakes, but it doesn't say anything about how other mammals react to snakes. (Unless the medial and dorsolateral pulvinar are specific to primates, but I'm guessing they're not.) There once was a time when all mammals were essentially small rodents... I wouldn't be surprised if this deeply rooted recognition of snake like activity long predated the appearance of primates.
Snakes are still there, and so are primates. Shouldn't we be seeing more speciation as time goes on?
It said nothing about our brains. It talked about macaque brains in captive-born animals that had *never in their lives seen a snake*.
I have had it with these muthafuckin snakes in this muthafuckin brain!
What about Jennifer Aniston? How did they react to her?
...or retroviruses and the p53
My mom has that same trait I've seen in films of wild monkeys -- if she sees a snake, ANY snake, she immediately screams and points and jumps onto the nearest raised object. It's hardwired, totally instinctive reaction on her part.
I react the other way around -- if I see a poisonous snake, I instantly go into hunter/killer mode, and woe unto the rattlesnake that crosses my path.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
My wife does the same thing with frogs, and my niece with spiders. It may be deeply seated, but it's not instinctual.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I'm going to go with the opposite here. Clearly the snake in the Garden of Eden is just a manifestation of this deep primate-brain evolution.
in my pants, how will this play out?
In fact the only evolutionary reason for snakes to have a special importance in shaping human and simian features would have been if we where snake predators...
3D vision and the ability for fixing on branch like patterns are of such importance for an arboreal animal as our primate ancestors that anything else has to be considered purely incidental.
And why snakes and not eagles or leopards?
A stupid study.
-- 29A the number of the Beast